1983, the first-ever release from Stockton, California’s Torn Boys, the now legendary band featuring Jeffrey Clark, Kelly Foley, Duncan Atkinson, and a 19 year-old Grant-Lee Phillips, is set to be released in the first part of 2024 by Independent Project Records. The comprehensive archival ten-track set of rare, unreleased studio and live tracks documents the short but eventful life of Torn Boys, a group comprising future members of Shiva Burlesque, Gary Young’s Hospital and Grant Lee Buffalo. Formed in 1982 by IPR co-owner Jeffrey Clark (vocals, electric guitar) and Kelly Foley (vocals, acoustic guitar) and disbanded by late 1983, Torn Boys lived out their one and a half summers fusing dreamscape lyricism with ultra-’80’s synth rhythms and Robert Fripp-meets-Carl-Perkins electric guitar textures, leaving behind a scant recorded legacy before dissolving.“What Jeff (Clark) and Kelly (Foley) were doing, you just didn’t see that kind of thing happening in Stockton,” says Phillips. “So we connected right away over a mutual obsession with the alluring fringes of music, art and film.”
Forty years after the fact, the Torn Boys recordings still fend off basic categorization, conjuring the darker corners of neo-psychedelic California, infusing New Wave-era sensibilities with the moodier angle of home-grown, art-punk-surrealism.
Recommended: Track 1, “See Through My Eyes,” Track 6, “May Day,” Track 10, “Lady Luck,” Track 6, “Fountain of Blood”
FCC Clean
Label: Independent Project Records
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